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Conviva chief strategy officer Keith Zubchevich on the how the Internet remains a hostile environment for video, even as more video is traversing the open network, and on the technological approach Conviva devised for making the Internet safe for video.

The pay-TV universe expanded by about 260,000 subscribers in the first quarter. On the broadband side, that the seventeen largest cable and telephone providers in the U.S. acquired nearly 1.2 million net additional high-speed Internet subscribers.

Over the course of the campaigns, WE tv said it has seen 25 percent of the viewers who interacted with the spot opt-in for an SMS reminder. Additionally, initial interaction rates were as high as 3 percent, significantly above standard rates for other direct response media such as internet advertising or direct mail.

Cox Communications and the Tennis Channel have teamed up to provide French Open coverage to the cable operator’s authenticated subscribers. At no additional cost, Cox subscribers can access the Tennis Channel’s linear coverage stream “from nearly everywhere” on a variety of devices such as smartphones, tablets and computers.

With their $45 billion merger making the regulatory rounds, the last thing Comcast and Time Warner Cable needed was a very public black eye in American Customer Satisfaction Index survey (ACSI), which was released yesterday. To recap, Time Warner Cable finished dead last in customer satisfaction for both its video and data services while Comcast was second to last in the same catagories in the survey.

Antitrust experts say AT&T's bid for DirecTV could reap immediate regulatory rewards. Coming so quickly on the heels of a rival cable company merger —the pairing of Comcast and Time Warner Cable— makes it easier for regulators to approve both transactions because they create two counterbalanced giants in pay TV.

Netflix will expand into Germany, France and four other European countries later this year as the Internet video service tries to build an international following that might eventually surpass its U.S. audience. The additional markets announced Wednesday will extend Netflix's reach into nearly 50 countries, including 13 in Europe.

Teleste and Casa Systems said they are collaborating on the development of a distributed CCAP/remotePHY solution based on Casa’s C100G CCAP platform and Teleste’s RemotePHY optical node. The companies plan for proof-of-concept implementation by late 2014.

Telefunken Communications is in the process of deployoing PON technology from Aurora Networks. The company began to launch new internet services in April, including 150 Mbps broadband for residential customers and up to 250 Mbps (symmetrical) for business customers.

Pi Telecom and RGB have integrated the former's MediaStage family of products with the latter's software-based encoding. The solution has already been deployed with Megafon, one of Russia's largest mobile operators, to deliver more than 200 live channels and a range of services.

Pay-TV subscribers’ satisfaction with their video services from some of the largest providers is eroding, according to the latest annual survey by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI.) The survey didn’t bode particularly well for would be merger partners Comcast and Time Warner Cable, which dropped 5 percent and 7 percent, respectively, in the survey’s video customer satisfaction rankings.

With the notable exception of Comcast, most cable operators in North America continued to bleed out basic video subscribers in the most recent first quarter earnings reports, but those losses were at least partially offset by increasing average revenue per user (ARPU), according to a recent report by Infonetics Research.

Given all of the Wi-Fi related news over the past few months, an interesting press release came over the transom this morning. Benu Networks announced today that a “major North American MSO” had deployed its technology for community Wi-Fi deployments. Benu added more mystery to release by saying that it was in lab trials with two more North American service providers.

Incognito Software has promoted William L. Yan to chief operating officer. Yan had been Incognito’s senior vice president for worldwide sales. He is a 20-year veteran with experience spanning business development, sales, and marketing for established technology firms and early stage, venture-funded startups.